Tiara, my daughter, started teaching at the Society for the Education of the Crippled in Mumbai Central. Earlier, she had gone to check out the group that teaches street children but then decided to teach the handicapped children.
Every time she came back from teaching, she had new stories to tell about the plight of the children there. Her observations — earlier that of a 16-year-old — slowly became deeper and more soulful.

“Mamma,” she said, “You know these children only study up to the 7th standard and then after that they go to a municipal school where they are not taken care of like they are in this school. Sometimes they are put on the 5th or 6th floor which they cannot manage due to their disability, and therefore drop out and just stay at home.” She added sadly, “Can you imagine the hope they build up during these young years, just to come crashing down later?”
Tiara teaches them art and English. “There is a child there who would always take a black crayon and scribble all over the paper,” she said, “And then I patiently taught her to use colour. What is the point if the future will make her use a black crayon again?” she asked me, searching for answers.
“There is another child called Suraj who craves love and attention. When I taught and did not give him individual attention, he kept crying inconsolably. Later, I was told that he is an orphan and needs love. How sad is that, mom?”
Another time she told me that a nine-year-old had fallen sick in school and her parents were called. They, however, left the school to deal with it. Tiara was very disturbed. I then explained to her that her parents are probably working somewhere and need the money to survive, quickly throwing light on the fact that she and her friends were lucky.
I knew that Tiara’s reactions were that of a young teenager’s that are filled with hope and dreams for the future. I let her believe that even in the case of permanently handicapped children, hope is reason enough to be happy.
“Mamma, you should see how little things make them so happy. We don’t see that kind of happiness even when we have everything,” she once said. “Despite being crippled, the boys dance with no inhibitions when the Dab-angg song plays. Small things like chocolates or listening to stories make them ecstatic,” she said emphatically.
Tiara then decided to paint, deriving her inspiration from Hope, Love and Luck, and named her exhibition just that. “When you paint, you express yourself and a lot that is inside you comes out on the canvas,” she said to me. I felt I still had to know a lot about my child.
She titled a black and white painting of a couple walking on a path together under a red umbrella, Endless.
She titled a fairy sitting on the moon painting stars in the sky, Serendipity.
A ladder reaching from the realms of low to high, she titled Limitless.
A shoe with a pumpkin and a clock was audaciously titled Cinderella….
“There are so many ways to express hope, love, and luck,” she said. “So many different aspects in life symbolise these emotions,” she said with wisdom and compassion that one would never guess the children of today are possibly capable of.